Accepting papers for the Graduate Student Conference at the Catholic University of America, School of Philosophy. Listed below is information about the conference and a call for papers.

Luke Russell

Co-Chair Graduate Student Conference

Catholic University of America

A CALL FOR PAPERS

The Public and The Private

A Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy

Catholic University of America

March 20 & 21, 2015

The distinction between the public and the private has interested philosophers from Plato to Augustine, and from early modern political theorists up to Hegel, and beyond. Today, however, the distinction seems to be as paramount to our political discourse as it is resistant to a clear articulation. In order to (re)consider this distinction, its meaning, and its implications, we are pleased to announce the topic of our 2015 Spring Philosophy Graduate Conference:“The Public and the Private.” We welcome papers from any philosophical field or tradition in which this distinction is addressed.

The following sorts of questions are of particular relevance to the conference:

• How are we to draw the distinction between the public and the private “spheres”? How did ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers understand these categories?

• What motivates, and what are the implications of such a distinction in various philosophical fields: language, epistemology, and political philosophy? What other sorts of distinctions might more manifestly illuminate these various philosophical disciplines?

• Can the same sort of agency or responsibility be ascribed to individuals and public entities? What role should the city or state play in moral education or formation?

Please submit abstracts of 500-600 words for blind review, with a cover page for your name, institution, and email address. Send them to cua.gradconference@gmail.com by December 21, 2014. If you are selected to present your paper, you will be notified by January 24, 2015.

The SEP/FEP Joint Conference is the largest annual event in Europe that aims to bring together researchers, teachers and others, from different disciplines, interested in all areas of contemporary European philosophy. The conference’s plenary theme is Philosophy After Nature, and will present papers and panels that are after nature in the sense of being in pursuit of nature’s consequences. The program will include perspectives on critique, science, ecology, technology and subjectivity as bound up with conceptions of nature and experiment with various positions in contemporary thought.

]]>http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2014/05/25/second-cfp-for-sep-fep-2014-serres-jaeggi-hansen-and-francoise-balibar-keynotes/feed/0Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2013/02/22/adam-smiths-moral-and-political-philosophy-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/
http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2013/02/22/adam-smiths-moral-and-political-philosophy-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/#commentsFri, 22 Feb 2013 06:01:11 +0000http://www.continental-philosophy.org/?p=3437Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy Adam Smith developed a comprehensive and somewhat unusual version of moral sentimentalism in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759, TMS). He did not expressly lay out a political philosophy in similar detail, but a distinctive set of views on politics can be extrapolated from elements of both TMS and […]]]>

Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy

Adam Smith developed a comprehensive and somewhat unusual version of moral sentimentalism in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759, TMS). He did not expressly lay out a political philosophy in similar detail, but a distinctive set of views on politics can be extrapolated from elements of both TMS and his Wealth of Nations (1776, WN); student notes from his lectures on jurisprudence (1762–1763, LJ) have also helped flesh out his thoughts on governance. A central thread running through his work is an unusually strong commitment to the soundness of the ordinary human being’s judgments, and a concern to fend off attempts, by philosophers and policy-makers, to replace those judgments with the supposedly better “systems” invented by intellectuals. In his “History of Astronomy”, he characterizes philosophy as a discipline that attempts to connect and regularize the data of everyday experience (Smith 1795: 44–7); in TMS, he tries to develop moral theory out of ordinary moral judgments, rather than beginning from a philosophical vantage point above those judgments; and a central polemic of WN is directed against the notion that government officials need to guide the economic decisions of ordinary people. Perhaps taking a cue from David Hume’s skepticism about the capacity of philosophy to replace the judgments of common life, Smith is suspicious of philosophy as conducted from a foundationalist standpoint, outside the modes of thought and practice it examines. Instead, he maps common life from within, correcting it where necessary with its own tools rather than trying either to justify or to criticize it from an external standpoint. He aims indeed to break down the distinction between theoretical and ordinary thought. This intellectual project is not unconnected with his political interest in guaranteeing to ordinary individuals the “natural liberty” to act in accordance with their own judgments.

]]>http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2013/02/22/adam-smiths-moral-and-political-philosophy-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/feed/0The Sophists (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2011/10/06/the-sophists-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/
http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2011/10/06/the-sophists-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/#commentsThu, 06 Oct 2011 04:51:57 +0000http://www.continental-philosophy.org/?p=2986The Greek word sophist’s, formed from the noun sophia, ‘wisdom’ or ‘learning’, has the general sense ‘one who exercises wisdom or learning’. As sophia could designate specific types of expertise as well as general sagacity in the conduct of life and the higher kinds of insight associated with seers and poets, the word originally meant ‘sage’ or ‘expert’. In the course of the fifth century BCE the term, while retaining its original unspecific sense, came in addition to be applied specifically to a new type of intellectuals, professional educators who toured the Greek world offering instruction in a wide range of subjects, with particular emphasis on skill in public speaking and the successful conduct of life. The emergence of this new profession, which was an extension to new areas of the tradition of the itinerant rhapsode (reciter of poems, especially of Homer), was a response to various social, economic, political and cultural developments of the period. The increasing wealth and intellectual sophistication of Greek cities, especially Athens, created a demand for higher education beyond the traditional basic grounding in literacy, arithmetic, music and physical training. To some extent this involved the popularization of Ionian speculation about the physical world (see Presocratic Philosophy), which was extended into areas such as history, geography and the origins of civilization. The increase in participatory democracy, especially in Athens, led to a demand for success in political and forensic oratory, and hence to the development of specialized techniques of persuasion and argument. Finally, the period saw the flourishing of a challenging, rationalistic climate of thought on questions including those of morality, religion and political conduct, to which the sophists both responded and contributed. It is important to emphasize the individualistic character of the sophistic profession; its practitioners belonged to no organization, shared no common body of beliefs and founded no schools, either in the sense of academic institutions or in that of bodies of individuals committed to the promulgation of specific doctrines. In what follows we shall illustrate the diversity of sophistic activities, while considering the extent to which we can nevertheless identify common themes and attitudes.

PassMyWill is a free service that will check in with Facebook and Twitter to see if you’re alive and posting updates, if you don’t appear to be active, it will send you an email to confirm your death, then it sends out emails to everyone on your list if you don’t respond. You can include whatever passwords you like, whether it’s email, Facebook or anything else. It’s not just willfully giving out passwords though, recipients will need a key to unlock them, which you’ll have to give to them before you pass on.

]]>http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2011/10/03/being-toward-death-2-0/feed/0New Entry: Social Norms (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2011/03/05/new-entry-social-norms-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/
http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2011/03/05/new-entry-social-norms-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/#commentsSat, 05 Mar 2011 17:13:00 +0000http://www.continental-philosophy.org/?p=2771Social norms, the customary rules that govern behavior in groups and societies, have been extensively studied in the social sciences. Anthropologists have described how social norms function in different cultures (Geertz 1973), sociologists have focused on their social functions and how they motivate people to act (Durkheim 1950; Parsons 1937, Parsons and Shils 1951; Coleman 1990; Hechter and Opp 2001), and economists have explored how adherence to norms influences market behavior (Akerlof 1976; Young 1998). More recently, also legal scholars have touted social norms as efficient alternatives to legal rules, as they may internalize negative externalities and provide signaling mechanisms at little or no cost (Ellickson 1991; Posner 2000).

Elevate Difference is a forum for thoughtful critique that aims to embody the myriad—and sometimes conflicting—viewpoints present in the struggle for political, social, and economic justice. Elevate Difference offers fluid and dynamic perspectives on various items and events that represent the rich differences found in progressive communities.

Vision

Emerging from the desire to dismantle progressive movements that privilege assimilation to one school of thought over another, Elevate Difference intends to make the value of difference more visible. We seek to move beyond a facile tolerance of difference that eschews its merit in favor of focusing on common ground. We believe the ways we are dissimilar should be foregrounded, engaged, and deemed of equal worth. Elevate Difference provides a challenge to ourselves and to our readers, a reflection of our ideological paradigms, and a command to reframe our actions.

Given that we all begin our lives as children, it is perhaps surprising that philosophy has paid such little attention, relatively speaking, to childhood. This week, we meet the American philosopher and psychologist Alison Gopnik, who argues that in some ways young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring and even more conscious than adults are.